On Saturday, since we are all lifestyle lover, we came up with ideas starting from home experience.

Mind Map

But on the halfway of this, we found it is meaningless to keep listing all the activities, so we thought of another way, affinity diagram, to give birth to our topics, which use the reversed logic to think of topic ideas, grouping listed items instead of listing items under groups.

Affinity Diagram for Topic Brainstorming

Then we made four groups of ATMOSPHERE, PHYSICAL ACTIVITIES, ENTERTAINMENT, SOLITUDE, but we still didn’t know where to start, so we decided to continue meeting next day.

The God felt sorry about that, so he shed light on our topic on Sunday morning:

Divine Indiction

Then we had a eureka moment and came up with an idea based on our same interest on nature and Zen:

How to bring the sound, visual and touch of nature into home?

How to make meditation more natural and immersive?

How can we interact with our biometric signals, such as heartbeat, breathing, neural pulse, etc?

So our topic is:

We would like to create a more immersive meditation experience by using wearable device to connect with our biometric signals.

We don’t want to limit our idea too much, so we make it not limited and not broad as well. It is not necessary to only be limited on domestic experience, we can still use it portably and anywhere.

The next step is to research for our topic and make a timeline.

Our interaction might be bio and rhythm based:

Audio: White Noise, ASMR, …

Visual: color, scene, …

Touch: texture, vibration, …

Our research goal would be:

Theoretical Research:

1.Competitor Analysis of meditation service nowadays.

2.How biometrics link to meditation?

3.How was the meditation like in bio world?

4.Why people like meditation?

……

Technical Research:

1.What kinds of biometrics signals people want to control when they are meditation?

This three weeks, we made a haunted house. Since the next day of our presentation is Halloween, so we decide to create a Halloween experience by building a haunted house.

Name: Haunted House

A Phrase of Description: An interactive haunted house with creepy events When player get close and ring the doorbell.

Concept: When the player gets close to the house, the red light at the entrance illuminates. When the user rings the doorbell, a series of spooky events happen. Finally, with a creepy sound and magic lights, player presses the button and get candies!

Here is the original sketch and schematic wiring diagram：

Here is the circuitry:

Here is the 3D-modelling haunted house:

Here are some pictures of the house:

Here is the final effect:

Introspection:

Generally, everything works fine, but we still need to provide some indicators to let players know when and where to press the buttons to move to next step.

This week, I collaborated with Sofia and Gianmarco, both of them are really cool and supportive team-workers. We have to use different sensors or switches to make a lock box, only if we turn on the switches/sensors in right sequence, the green LED can be lightened, otherwise red LED will be lightened. If person turn on the switches/sensors in a wrong sequence three times, the yellow LED will be lightened.

Schematic Diagram

Making Physical Circuit

Arduino Coding

Test the Circuit

Final Lock Box

Unfortunately, we failed to make a lock box that can turn certain LED on after a certain sequence, but we did learn a lot. We finally found it is because we use three totally different sensors and switches, so we can not use Arduino coding with simple logic. Also, we learnt how to use array to make LED turn on only after three times action. The most unexpected thing we found is the action turning switch on will make a vibration that influences the ultrasonic sensor, so it caused the coding we make invalid.

This week, because my sponge still leaves in my kitchen, so I made another new switch.

The purpose of this week’s courses is to let us learn different types of switches and the difference between analog and digital input, so I combine three different switches together, which are toggle switch, potentiometer and normal switch, and use Arduino as a microcontroller to transfer the distance of hand to the ultrasonic sensor to the voltage of circuit. Then I used behavior like Taichi as a trigger to control led bright and dimmer slowly.

Finally, I hide every pieces into a box in order to make it neat.

Here are some photos in making process.

Making Box

Bond Pieces Together via Glue Gun

Draw Schematic Diagram

Assemble Circuit and Put Them Inside of Box

Finished

This is a small homemade switch made by sponge and circuit. It is a very simple circuit structure. I just use the sponge, which is conductive when it gets wet and non-conductive when dry, as a part of circuit.

I come up with a lot of ideas.

The first way is to change the conductivity of a material to show the transition of the lighting, and also the transition of the material. For example, melted ice can be a conductor, so do boiled eggs.

The second way is to use some weird and unexpected conductive materials, such as Coca Cola, fruits, and some special behaviors, such as inserting coins to not only make a weird switch, but also a funny video to lighten the led.

Finally, I choose a weird conductive material, sponge and using watering as a behavior to turn the switch on, and then watch the sponge expands and led turns on.